Removing old Humbucker Tape?

[Jeff Callahan]

Can't find this in the search, but I'm sure it has been mentioned...

I'm repairing an old Fender WR Humbucker, and don't want to rewind. The tape is old and brittle, but the adhesive is still doing its job. Anyone have any suggestions how to safely remove the stick without breaking the wire?

Thanks, Jeff

[korinastratkyle]

Lemon Oil or Goo Gone?

[Jeff Callahan]

My initial thought as well, but didn't know if it would strip the insulation...

[Possum]

....

Yes done this many times. It will be MESSY so have alot of paper towels around. Get some lighter fluid which is naptha and soak the tape for awhile, just keep putting it on, then when it softens up start peeling the tape off. If you intend to save the tape and reuse, pull the tape off at only a slight angle, if you pull up at a straight extreme angle the tape will crinkle and when you put it on again it will be obvious it was removed once. Save the tape by taping it to some wax paper adhesive side down. The coils will end up with alot of black goop on them thats real sticky, so put the bobbin with coil in a small plastic container and fill it with naptha and let it soak for a couple hours. Then wipe the goop off the coils and you're done. Then repair the coil if thats what you're doing. PUt the old tape back on. You may need to refresh the adhesive, I use one-coat rubber cement which remains tacky, you can get at art supply stores or online at Pearl Art I think.

[Jeff Callahan]

Worked like a dream...

One more question, too late for me now, but what is the best way to unwind a coil, I tried several different methods, but none seemed ideal.

I put an empty spool my winder and fasten pickup coil to a board with top facing the spool and started the winder. It worked until I got close to the end, and then the lip of the bobbin seemed too drastic to have the wire pull across it.

Thanks, Jeff

[Possum]

...

Are you unwinding to try and find a break where the coil died? Or just want to remove the whole coil? What I do with a valuable vintage pickup is mount it on my winder and remove the pulley belt so the faceplate the coil is mounted on spins free. Then I start pulling the wire in long arm pulls, or slow if I want to count turns per layer and see how the coil was wound. It can be slow going but works. I had a PAF coil months ago I ended up unwinding the whole damn thing and never found the problem, which was probably a bad solder joint in the start lead buried at the bottom of the coil. On the other hand a lot of old P90's I started unwinding had breaks in the coil very close to the surface, the wire just was eaten through and fell off. Great because it was minimal rewinding and just splicing in new wire equivalent of the same type and diameter. You can have problems with undercut winds and if the wire breaks there while you're unwinding it can be a royal bitch to find that wire break. I use a toothpickup and dig around to find and most of the time find it. Watch out for rough edges on the bobbin or some tape glue residue thats dried as it can grab the wire and break when you're unwinding.

If you just want to get rid of the coil get some small nail scissors and cut through it all at one spot and remove the whole coil. But you really should unwind and count turns per layer because those were machine wound and if you change the turns per layer it won't sound like its supposed to. You need to copy the pattern thats there.

[Jeff Callahan]

Thanks again Possum,

I'm fixing a WR Fender Humbucker, and I was trying to save the wire and got most of it off cleanly. Unwinding by mounting the pickup on the winder was definitely a royal bitch! With the long arm method, how do you keep the wire from being tangled? There's got to be an easier way.

Here's what I came up with, but failed towards the very end when the wire was deep inside the bobbin. I unwound it very slow. It got hung up a couple times, but the low speed of the winder and the felt tension kept it from breaking (until the end). Sorry for the poor picture, the spool the wire is being led onto is attached to my winder and the bobbin is 4 feet away double sticked to a board. Somewhat like the opposite of winding a pickup I guess. What you can't see is the wire was under tension just before being wound on the spool.

[Possum]

....

Its really hard to save old wire to reuse, basically I don't. Old vintage Gibson bobbins almost always have undercut winds that will break no matter what you do. I'm not sure how practical it is to reuse old wire, especially if its PE because its aged so much. Yours I'm sure has poly wire so yeah you could probably get away with it. Maybe it didn't break towards the end but thats where the wire failed?

[Jeff Callahan]

Could be, but I don't think so. I now have the original 5.0K and a rewound 4.6K coil. Don't know how it will sound, but I'm hoping decent after all that b.s. I didn't have any poly so I decided to try to save the wire, but now I'm wondering if the coils will be to unbalanced. Is 0.6K too much difference?

[Possum]

....

Well you were lucky, PAF coils won't unwind like that, TTops either, they always snag in undercut winds usually on the ends. .6K is a big difference. It will open up alot more frequencies than orginally. Well unless they were unequal winds but I don't think any vintage bucker was unbalanced on purpose.

[Jeff Callahan]

OK, lesson learned. I went through all that BS and for nothing. The wire was brittle and gave me nothing but trouble. Ended up using Plain Enamel and it is working fine, got the coil to match the other at 5.0K and all is well...minus the 4 hours messin with the thing.

Thanks again Possum.

Jeff

[Possum]

...

Was it PE on that pickup, I couldn't tell from the photo...
So did it short out after you wound it again? I've never been able to get a full coil off to use again intact so never tried it, just know that the insulation on ancient wire is really easy to remove....

[Jeff Callahan]

The original wire was 42 poly. I used 42 PE to wind the broken coil, because I couldn't get enough tension on the old wire without feeling like it was about to break. The coil was way too loose, and read only 4.4K.

[Zhangliqun]

Never try to save the old wire unless you absolutely have to -- and are being paid accordingly for all that effort that might still come to nothing. And I suppose it would have helped even more if I told you that sooner.

[Jeff Callahan]

Yes...lesson learned